George Bernard Shaw Quotes

No, really: I can't fight, I never could. I can't bring myself to dislike anyone enough.

Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

All intellectual labor is inherently humorous

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They spell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds like. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen.

The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.

Wisdom is wasted on the old, and youth is wasted on the young.

At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world.

No public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

But I will now go further, and confess to you that men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.

I have to live for others and not for myself; that's middle-class morality.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life

Progress is impossible without change; and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. Creeds, articles, and institutes of religious faith ossify our brains and make change impossible. As such they are nuisances, and in practice have to be mostly ignored.

Hohe Bildung kann man dadurch beweisen, daß man die kompliziertesten Dinge auf einfache Art zu erläutern versteht.

No age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable general in a nation is its Cæsar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least commonplace poet its Shakespeare.